[Ads-l] Joke for Philosophers and Linguists: "Please Give Me a Cup of Coffee Without Cream" "You'll Have To Take It Without Milk. We Haven't Any Cream"

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

Great work, Jeff. Thanks for your help. I have updated the QI article
with the following passage, and I have added you to the
acknowledgement section.

[Begin excerpt]
U.S. actor Johnny Hines was a star of the silent film era. He appeared
in a series of short films about a redheaded office worker named
"Torchy" The film titles included "Torchy Comes Through" (1920),
"Torchy in High" (1920), and "Torchy's Millions" (1920). The films
were based on a series of books by Sewell Ford which began with
"Torchy" in 1911. QI has not seen these films. Also, QI has not
examined all these books; hence, QI has not verified the presence or
absence of this joke.
[End excerpt]

Changes should be visible within 24 hours.
Garson

On Sun, Jun 2, 2024 at 1:20 AM Jeff Prucher
<000000b93183dc86-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>
>  It looks like the "Torchy" movie in question is one of a series of shorts that were based on a series of books by Sewell Ford (according to this promo poster on imdb: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0467329/mediaviewer/rm318772993/?ref_=tt_ov_i). Project Gutenberg has a number of these books, but searching for "milk" and "cream" didn't bring up anything resembling this joke.
> Also according to imdb.com, the "Torchy" short that was closest to the newspaper citation is "Torchy Mixes In", released on 1/23/1921; I have no idea how accurate imdb is with dates this old, however. I was not able to find any Torchy shorts on YouTube or archive.org; I don't know what other resources might exist for this kind of thing.
> Jeff Prucher    On Saturday, June 1, 2024 at 08:39:11 PM PDT, ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  List member LH inquired (off list) about the joke in the subject line.
> It has been linked to various people including Jean-Paul Sartre,
> George Carlin, Slavoj Žižek, O. O. McIntyre, Billy Wilder, and Leo
> Rosten.
>
> Here is a link to the new Quote Investigator article:
> https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/06/01/coffee-cream/
>
> The earliest match I located appeared in a 1921 article which
> indicated that the joke occurred in a movie.
>
> Date: January 30, 1921
> Newspaper: The Mansfield News
> Newspaper Location: Mansfield, Ohio
> Article: Might Be Different In Real Restaurant
> Section: Social, Quote Page 7, Column 1
> Database: Newspapers.com
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> "Give me a cup of coffee without cream."
> "You'll have to take it without milk. We haven't any cream."
> That from Johnny Hines' new Torchy comedy.
> [End excerpt]
>
> U.S. actor Johnny Hines was a star of the silent film era. He appeared
> in several films in 1920 and 1921. I don’t know which of his films (if
> any) contained this joke. Thus, the creator of the gag remains
> anonymous, at this time.
>
> Garson
>
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>
>
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